Waking up in Hokitika in the sun, after such a rainy night was a good reflection of how quickly the weather changes on the west coast. It's unsurprising when walking down on the beach to find that Hokitika hosts the annual 'Driftwood Sculpture Competition’. Mid morning, K went off to the shops, so M got the fishing rod out and only one of us had success.

Our late leaving departure to drive up the coast fortunately gave us wild spectacular weather, with an incoming tide. As always we made several stops. Firstly, the Punakaiki National park, famous for the unusual stacks of limestone pancake rocks. The wild seas have eroded big holes in the rocks, and at high tide, the sea water swells up and spurts cold foaming water high into the air. Convincing M to stop and walk in the rain for 20 minutes, just to photograph some rocks, was somewhat of a challenge, but luckily we weren’t disappointed.

Our next stop was the seal colony, always a favourite of ours, and watching seals with pups from the cliff edge is always delightful.

Our only night drive to date had K shaking in her boots, as she realised we were driving up and down steep gorge passes with unsurvivable cliff edges.